Israeli-American anthropologist Smadar Lavie will discuss her new book,“Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture.” The Mizrahim are the Jews from North Africa and the Middle East who comprise Israel’s majority Jewish population. They suffer from systematic discrimination by Israel’s Ashkenazi Jews who drive Israeli policymaking. Lavie’s is the first English language ethnography about single mothers in the Middle East. This is one of the very few ethnographies about single mothers outside North America. The book explores Israel’s intra-Jewish racial and ethnic conflicts from a feminist perspective. It analyzes how the plight of Mizrahi single mothers relates to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, as well as its tensions with Iran and other neighboring Arab countries. Lavie uncovers the conundrum of loving and staying loyal to a state that
uses its bureaucratic system to repeatedly inflict pain on its
non-European majority who, despite this pain, is willing to sacrifice
their lives for what they conceive of as the state’s security.

Equating bureaucratic entanglements with pain—what, arguably, can be seen as torture, Smadar Lavie explores the conundrum of loving and staying loyal to a state that repeatedly inflicts pain on its
non-European Jewish women citizens through its bureaucratic system. The book presents a model of bureaucracy as divine cosmology and posits that Israeli State bureaucracy is based on a theological essence that fuses the categories of religion, gender, and race into the foundation of citizenship.

The final, culminating event of the Critical Examinations of “Community” series will be a lecture and public discussion led by the remarkable anthropologist John L. Jackson, Richard Perry Professor of Communication, Africana Studies and Anthropology; University of Pennsylvania.

A cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, John L. Jackson, Jr. has published widely on race and class in the contemporary U.S. His recent books include: Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity and Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness.

Dr. Jackson is an excellent speaker and a skilled leader and moderator of open discussions. His visit is certain to impart ideas and inspiration for our own explorations and struggles to improve campus life for all at Swarthmore College.

We hope you will help spread the word and join us for this exciting event!

RECEPTION TO FOLLOW

This program has been made possible with funding and administrative support from the Aydelotte Foundation for the Advancement of the Liberal Arts (formerly Institute for the Liberal Arts).

Please join us on Wednesday, February 12th from 4:30 pm -5:45 pm in the Scheuer Room of Kohlberg for the annual Black History Month Keynote lecture given by Dr. Deborah Thomas, anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania. The title of her lecture is, “The Time of the Archive: Visual Anthropology and State Violence in Jamaica.”

She will make connections to state sponsored violence in the United States.

Session will include time for question and answers. Light refreshment will be served.